After Advent’s Second Sunday

My faith is funny like this: The closer I come to God, more intense experiences with demons. The closer I craft and form a Self, more intense confrontations with angels. Ah, droplet; how you clung to hope, wrestled against faith, and turned your back on charity! Haven’t I learned? You can muffle your cries, but your Lord searches even if you condemn the skies.

You do not want my linen in blood and tears? With hands like these, unused to this task, blood converges and tears have song. There is blood and tears made for my cloth, but my linen is not that? It’s an offering, a gift to You.

My favourite psalm holds me with painful words. Hope, here, is my memory of a dagger and these scars on my forearms. Hope is the exquisite cry-to-action saying to seek Your face and live. I waited for Death so long that I forgot I must first live. I will not adore You there if I cannot love You here.

I prefer the Mass to Adoration. I spend much time lonely with You. In the Mass, I have a family, people whom I am responsible to and learn the work with me. How wonderful it is to be with faces turned to our altar. “Look upon the oblation of Your Church …” How happy we are to be with You, O Lord, how joyful we are to look together towards You. Our Body is Yours; welcome home, dear and awful Master.